{ARC Review} Righteous by Kim Lehman

A story about friendships, love, and self-discovery.
Quick witted, sharp-tongued Righteous Andrews is troubled by a broken past, fed up with her present circumstances, and resolved to a hopeless future.
On the first day of her senior year of high school she gets in trouble, landing in the principal’s office . . . again. There she meets Colt Jackson, the new kid with a troubled past of his own. Despite her attempts to avoid him, Colt seems to show up everywhere she doesn’t want him to be, and soon they strike up an unexpected friendship. Righteous is wary. Friendships aren’t her thing. But something about Colt is different; something about him makes her curious, makes her wonder . . .
Is Colt Jackson really different from everyone else? Does happiness and love truly exist? Or will every relationship in her life always end in lies and heartache?

I wouldn’t say this was a romance novel, in fact, there was very little romance in this book. I thought Righteous was more of a coming of age/motivation type of novel.

In Righteous, we followed Righteous’s journey of finding her self-confidence and purpose. Righteous
could’ve accepted how her life would be, if she does nothing. But then
something changed, Righteous realized she could be more than what was expected from her. In the end
Righteous started to look at the world little differently. She could’ve
easily settled, but she chooses not to, she was not going to accept what
everyone tried to define herself with, which was based on her birthright.

To be honest, I had trouble getting pass Righteous’s terrible mother, even if she was sort of “forgiving” in the end of the book. I also wondered how come the principal did nothing to investigate nor attempt to call the social service, in regarding to Righteous’s situation, even when the principal found out that Righteous ran away from home. It just seems very strange to me.

Overall, I thought the emotions part of the book remain lukewarm throughout the story, there was no particular ups nor downs. While this book should have been a heavier read, because Righteous’s situation was quite terrible, but all in all it was not over the top either, which made the book seem somewhat flat.
To me this book was written more like a biography, a diary, rather than a story. In the end this was an okay read for me. I can’t say this type of novels were my favorite, which was mostly inner-dialogs, with story plot that was typical and predictable. However, I did enjoyed reading Righteous’s journey of finding her place in the world, and her transformation throughout the book, Righteous started out helpless and defeated, and by the end of the book she found strength and endless of possibilities.